County median home price at $300,000

San Diego County home prices finished the year at a median of $300,000, $5,000 less than November and $130,000, or 30.3 percent, lower than in December 2007, MDA DataQuick reported Friday.

Sales skyrocketed to 3,325, up 24.4 percent from November and 8.3 percent over year-ago levels as buyers took advantage of lower-priced homes, many of which went through foreclosure in the previous 12 months.

While December is traditionally a time when people think of holidays and not moving houses, it often is a strong month as buyers and builders race to complete transactions for tax reasons.

The December median – representing the midpoint of all sales with half above and half below the figure – was the lowest since April 2002, when it stood at $295,000. From the peak of $517,500, set in November 2005, the median has now dropped 42 percent.

However, real estate economists have commented that the declines have been concentrated in about 20 neighborhoods where low-priced foreclosures dominate sales. The remaining 70-some ZIP codes saw less price depreciation, depending on the prevalence of distressed properties on the market.

DataQuick also released figures for the year as a whole and the totals represented the worst housing market on record in 21 years of record keeping in terms of prices and the slowest sales since 1995.

The 2008 median price was $360,000, down 24.4 percent from 2007 and by far the biggest year-over-year drop since DataQuick began monitoring San Diego in 1988. The previous biggest drop occurred in 2007, but the decline was a relatively small 4.8 percent. In the early-1990s recession, there were four straight years of price declines, but they never exceeded 2.4 percent set in 1995.

The record annual peak for housing prices occurred in 2005 and 2006 at $500,000, meaning that the 2008's median was 28 percent off the peak and the lowest since 2002's $320,000.

The components of the price drop included resale houses, down 29.4 percent to $385,000 from 2007; resale condos, down 33.2 percent to $247,000; and new housing, up 9.6 percent to $475,000, a figure experts believe is due to the virtual disappearance of low-cost condo conversions.

The resale market ended the year with a majority of monthly sales having been previous foreclosures, a factor, no doubt, in the steep price drop.

Sales grew as prices plunged throughout the year, resulting in a total 34,294 in transactions, only 1.3 percent below 2007's 34,741 figure. That compares with the peak of 68,315 sales in 2004.

Resale houses totaled 20,612, up 13.7 percent from 2007; resale condos, 9,859, up 19.1 percent; and new homes and condo conversions, 3,823, down 54.2 percent, a reflection of the virtual halt in new construction in most of the county.